Actually, surprisingly well! Three days after launch and moderate pickup among local community and friends, Apple features it on its web apps page and iSpeed.info quickly becomes 4th “Most Popular” app and leader in its category, with a peak exactly a week after its launch.

Weekends are clearly a mark of slowdown. But nothing compares to an Apple event that brings new goodies like the recent one around the iPod.
Its attention captivated Apple website squatters, slashing the numbers by nearly 20%. It’s interesting to see if the numbers will go back up in the next few days.

An update with bug fixes and improved results was sent for review to Apple a few days ago. Curious to see how that fares.
All in all, iSpeed is doing great, having served more than 21K unique iPhone speed tests in just a week.
I had no attempt to monetize iSpeed.info at least yet!

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Update: now SpeedMeter has a new name and a new home at iSpeed.info

Try it out! Thanks! :)

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I’ve designed my first web app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It’s called SpeedMeter and it kinda does what it says on the box.

But I love how it turned out! (mind you I cannot really code). :)

Want a preview? Point your gorgeous iPhone here: iPhone SpeedMeter

Thanks Lee and the two Alex who helped me test it.

Screenshots:

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Left the biggest GSM carrier in the world - Vodafone - less than a month ago and slowly going back to blogging.
Currently in the limited 50-user beta of Things for iPhone, CulturedCode’s neat GTD application that in this version can sync wirelessly.

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So I got it! Typing on it as we speak. Dim brightness on the LED display and keyboard and all, fancy aluminum body and very very slender case. I’m electric! Have bought this sadness-bringing-geek-dream-machine when still unreleased in Romania and only a handful of my very fancy, style driven, fellow entrepreneurs have got it.

Owning it is easy. You just can’t understand why everyone doesn’t have one! And when you do, this mixed feeling of discomfort and exclusivity take over, as you know you have the best machine the guys at Cupertino now have to offer.
Inevitably “what next?” comes along.

The Air has proven many a time more that I need no Pro line computer. I need no fancy graphics card, no terabyte hard drive, no yada yada. I simply need my .Mac account to sync my bookmarks, keychain, Mail accounts and address book, beloved Twitterrific & Y! IM to just go ahead and start using my new Mac.

Music, movies (few) and other docs to go with I can always transfer over the tubes from my always-on Mac Mini at home.

The Air is the ultimate wireless device and so much fun. I happen to have Apple’s wireless Mighty Mouse, a fancy Sonyericsson Bluetooth headset and all the WiFi in the world + a HSUPA 3G modem. The rest is bliss and really, if your job is somewhat related to the web, if you don’t play Solitaire and don’t use a computer for spreadsheets, the Air fills in that gap. Most of my data is in the cloud, my get paid for online marketing and I’m a fancy roamer. And I got the cash too.

Fuck that white Macbook and ‘no thank you’ to the Pro line. I’m a sucker for the Air concept and I feel like I fit Apple’s initial bill like a glove. I do. And if your usage profile looks somewhat like mine, stop craving and go get one!
There’s a market niche for this machine and I’m happy to just say it: I’m one of those guys!

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This is hilarious! :)

You know what? I haven’t laughed as much in a long long time. And not so much about the video Gizmodo shot while they were ruthlessly killing CES LCDs and plasmas one by one, but the comment exchange I later found on the TV-B-Gone product page! [Later edit: removed since, but in full glory in screenshot below]
Enjoy:

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We all know airplane regulations about the use of electronic devices on board of an aircraft, don’t we?

Not only is there a total ban on any mobile phone use, but using a damn Tetris game is also a big no-no!
Yet here’s an interesting find on board of a Czech Airlines Airbus 321 aircraft flying from Bucharest to Prague:

(a picture is worth a thousand words, as usual)

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Ok! That’s it! I’m sold!

Till this I was still counting pros and cons on the new Macbook Air. But now there’s no doubt, I’m getting both! With the AirMail manila sleeve Air feels complete and personal! It feels right!

Will order the Manila folder notebook sleeve for Macbook Air to make sure I’ll have the actual reason to buy the machine.
Handmade out of durable upholstery-grade vinyl, and lined with fuzzy, soft fleece, AirMail sleeves have the same dimensions as standard interoffice manila envelopes.
Congratulate Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans, “two Apple geeks with combined handicraft-and-idea-person superpowers”, for coming up with this neat idea! They’ve earned it! (Jona, Claire: don’t fuck up!)

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So far some content providers are delivering a few solutions. Take Joost for example. It’s a great application from the founders of Skype that delivers TV shows via an application. A great selection of shows is available for every taste, it even works perfectly with my HP Pavillion dv1000 laptop’s remote, so I can “watch Joost” just like watching TV. But still, when I purchased my laptop, watching TV was not on the list of requirements and that’s because I and most buyers already own a TV set for that purpose.

Another solution is Apple TV, which lets you easily watch the video content from your computer on your TV screen. The solution is well done, but still, you have to go through your PC to watch content on your TV.

The last one I mention is a Romanian service I came across yesterday called i-tv that offers the same channel list that most cable TV providers on your computer for a monthly fee comparable to that of conventional cable TV providers.

While all these are good solutions, none of them let me plug in a cable into back of the TV set and watch content without a PC in the home.

Expect an IPTV offer from any of your mobile phone, fixed phone, cable TV or your Internet provider in the years to come!

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A few minutes ago, Lorand Minyo uploaded Steve Jobs’ keynote from MacWorld 2008.

I can’t write more right about now as I am extremely anxious to watch it myself, so for all of you who did not see it yet, you can do it here: Macworld 2008 Keynote Address (high quality)

(outside link)

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Actionec has released the official information on the zControl since my previous post.

Actiontec’s product interconnects any devices that use the Z-Wave protocol such as Motion Sensors, Cameras, Doors, Thermostats, Blinds etc. Z-Wave operates at 900Mhz with a range of 30 m and a bandwidth of up to 40Kbits/s. Although the through output may seem small, it is more that enough to send and receive status information and issue commands.

Interaction with the zControl is done via its a Web-based interface and may be accessed virtually from anywhere (assuming you have an Internet connection in your home and your router/gateway is properly configured to access the zControl remotely). Discovery of your Z-Wave enabled devices can be either automatic or a configuration wizard can be used for that purpose.

Now I’m looking forward to a review of the zControl in a real-life environment. I’ll keep you posted if I find anything. Until then, enjoy these two demos: Z-Wave World and Z-Wave.com.
Njoy your day!

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I have just learned about Actiontec reading an article on PCMag.com. Apparently this company is one step ahead of the competition focusing its product on solutions, not as much as just devices. Their product descriptions feature words like “IPTV” and “triple play”. I will cover IPTV and triple/quad-play in a later post.

As pointed out by Tim Bajarin, PCMag.com columnist, Actiontec’s zControl has won one of the 2008 International CES Innovations Design and Engineering Awards. The product is supposed to bring together many of the devices and gadgets in your home. Even if you’re not a big gadget freak, you might want to count the remotes in your home or phones and you will immediatly understand the need for one central control solution for your appliances and electronics in your home.

The zControl will be officially unveiled at the 2008 CES (Consumer Electronics Show), and no details are yet released. I’m looking forward to information to come on the solution.

I’ve been doing some research on what’s on the market in the area of home automation systems, my disertation thesis is “Multi agent System for Control and Monitoring an Intelligent Home”, so expect to read other interesting stuff I may come across.

Happy 2008! :)

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Today I rediscovered my Apple remote and although it’s based on shitty IR technology (will never grasp why they didn’t use the darn iSight as a sensor) I have to credit it as the coolest and most desirable wireless gadget in my geekdom.
Entertainment is 90% of my working time so you bet this little bugger fills in a lot!

And yeah, since we got here, I’m contemplating getting a Mac Mini (till they go extinct), a Nintendo Wii and a classic Apple iSight (for my Apple collection) for X-Mass.
I’m totally not sure which if not all at once. I’ll be much obliged if you had some ideas here.

Also open is my wish list:
- a .Mac account
- a Flickr Pro account
- an Airport Extreme Base Station
- Daniel Lyons’s bestseller 0Ption$

feeling generous? :)

take it easy folks, and happy holiday!

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I was talking about this with friends months ago, and finally someone did it. Who? Yahoo!

JetBlue is the first domestic carrier to test high altitude connectivity. You can bring your WiFi enabled gadgets, your BlackBerry’s and start browsing the web. IM on Yahoo! post twits on Twitter or whatever you want. It’s an Airbus A320 and it’s called BetaBlue as presented on JetBlue’s website, and the services are free to customers and provided exclusively by JetBlue and LiveTV™, Yahoo!®, and BlackBerry®.

Yahoo! went another step and even added special Status messages like “Head in the clouds - seriously”, “Sleeping on the Plane” and “Ugh! Crying baby on flight”

I have been predicting this a while ago, and now that it’s here, I just want to say “kudos” to everyone involved, and nice winds for the pilots.

Otherwise the cabin will be filled with flying gadgets ;-)

Sources for this article: Yahoo Messenger Blog, JetBlue Airways

This is why Wireless is FUN, and this is why I’m sorry I stopped writing here lately. I just hope I will have enough time to start writing again and bring you nice and fresh Wireless news, gossips and maybe not only wireless…

Just remember: Wireless IS FUN!

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Okay! I snugged the bugger a couple of hours ago from my favorite online retailer in Romania and am now typing on it.
They wouldn’t let me see it before I paid for it so I was in for a blind date, carrying spotty images in the back of my mind of the countless Youtube vids and various reviews I had seen before rushing to the showroom to pick it up right away. I was the third to get one. A chap bought one minutes before I did.
It set me back some $485, just fair considering it came with a 2GB SD card on the house. Not too shabby.

[wait up so I can grab a Corona]

I spammed everyone following on Twitter with “I just want to get home and play with it”-type of cry. Not cool!
Remembered when you saw all those vids on Youtube or whatever about the friggin iPhone and how much you wanted to see a real one to prove that was all made up?
Mkay, this is no different! But just like the iPhone, Asus delivered on the Eee PC with no exception! It’s as cool and slick as you’d imagine, minus the size and the actual feel when holding it. Hear me out: it’s even smaller than that! So small in fact that it feels like a toy, almost cheap albeit real! The keyboard is embarrassingly small and so is the screen. While with the keys there’s not much Asus could’ve done, the LCD could have definitely been bigger, with at least 1024 x something.

Well, the above and the small specs everyone complains about are in the end zero, naught, nix real issues. This baby computer does everything I bought it for: my Internet in the pocket! Be it blogging, twittering, seesmicing, flickring, whatever!

I did not buy it to store my music or my movies, not even all my podcasts that are so space hungry. It just wasn’t designed for that.

Okay, maybe 512MB of RAM is little but I’m willing to void my warranty and add up to at least a gig. The 4GB SSD HDD I complete with the free 2GB SD card I got along with the lappie, plus the bunch of many-a-gigabyte USB pen drives I got laying around, plus the 250GB ext USB disk I keep on my desk for everything-backup.
Mind you, there’s now aplenty online services just happy to carry your files online in some generous remote storage location, and any geek can name a few right now.

With my Vodafone HSDPA SMARTmodem I’m sure it will be friends when I’m done replacing the basic Linux distro the Asus came preloded with a legal copy of Windows XP. The WiFi is the best addition. The webcam is nice too, so see me on Loic Le Meur’s Seesmic.com

I somehow feel bad this thing hasn’t come preloaded with OSX. That’s my biggest drag. Tiger is great with lo-res screens and has the gestures needed to quickly jump around between different apps not even discussing about the rest of the goodnes it brings. But hey, weekend is near and I plan to play a little hacking game..

I can see how this portable has raised so much hysteria. It’s plain fucking cool! Minute, versatile, x86-based, complete and fast, wireless and ridiculously cheap for the ultraportables range!

I can see how it will replace (as planned) my Macbook for all the daily web chores and the iPhone as well (not so planned). And that, from an Apple fanboy is big! But hey, Macbooks are made by Asus, the WiFi router on my desk is a WL500GP Asus router and I’m growing more fond about the Taiwanese brand everyday.

For this praise, Asus, please rename the damn thing the iEEE, bokay?
At least it sounds like a standard, if not like an apple from the iChurch tree! Thank you!

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Don’t you just hate it being somewhere with your laptop, enjoying internet access on a free hotspot and the battery runs out of juice? What is the normal load for a normal battery? 3 hours? maybe 5 hours if you get a bigger battery, and set your usage profile to minimum? Well, I have some good news for you: Batteries are going to last a whole lot longer!

According to Next Energy News, your laptop battery can last up to thirty (yes, 30) years!!!

The US AirForce Research Laboratory reviled the betavoltaic power cells, which are constructed from semiconductors and use radioisotopes as the energy source. As the radioactive material decays it emits beta particles that transform into electric power capable of fueling an electrical device like a laptop for years.

Apparently you can’t build a nuclear weapon out of it even if the description has some pretty scary terms inside (radioactive, isotopes etc), and it’s quite safe on the environment.

Read more about this here

Won’t wireless be even MORE fun like this?!

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It’s true! Done! Basta! I did it! It took me less than half an hour! My iPhone is unlocked!

It’s maybe the first trully unlocked iPhones in Romania and among the few in the World by this method! But I can attest it works! Brilliantly!

Kudos to the dev team and the guys at Engadget who pointed this out. To have yours unlocked, go over to http://iphone.unlock.no/ and follow the exact steps. It’s the method I used and the one that now gives me full use on Vodafone RO and Orange. Simple!

Here’s a screenshot I took of the unlocking process:

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